Communist party gains as Japan economy sinks into the red

I / Tokyo May 13, 2009, 14:58 IST

Once banned and long seen as a fringe group, Japan's Communist Party has enjoyed a surge in membership during the country's economic meltdown.      

In the country at large, Karl Marx's "Das Kapital" has become a manga comic best-seller and an inter-war tale of worker exploitation has found a new readership as a graphic novel.      

Japan may be the world's second-biggest economy, but as it hits its worst slump since 1945, with corporate titans going into the red and shedding jobs, a youthful grassroots movement has started to question the capitalist system.      

Japan's Communist Party does not advocate violent revolution, and its members say they are not bound by the doctrines of Russia's Lenin or China's Mao, or even the party's own radical student movement of the 1960s and 1970s.      

But disaffection with mainstream political parties and labour unions has seen its membership surge by 1,000 people a month, while its Red Flag daily newspaper now has a readership of over 1.6 million, the party says.      

"This country is the world's second-biggest capitalist country," said Kimitoshi Morihara, deputy head of the party's international bureau. 

"But now the situation is quite difficult, particularly for the young."